church and state

Ilsup Ahn believes that a different conception of church could have stopped, among other things, housing segregation.

Secularists from Voltaire to Richard Dawkins have attacked religion for its connection to violence. Karen Armstrong flatly rejects the idea.

If you haven't read Justice Kagan's dissent to the Supreme Court's pro-governmental-prayer decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway, you should.

The National Cathedral’s going to start doing same-sex weddings! Here’s what prominent conservative blogger Allahpundit has to say:

[The cathedral is] nominally Episcopal but I’ve always thought of it as the beating heart of ceremonial deism, so no surprise that it would shift as the wider public does.

Say this for [Dean Gary Hall], too: He makes no bones about his political intentions. Although if you’re head of the National Cathedral and reaching out to press a hot button, why bother doing that? Why pretend it’s a purely religious decision when it’s not?

Allahpundit is obviously right about the ceremonial deism part. And I’ll be the first to admit that this strange American habit is bad for church and state alike.

But it’s absurd to suggest that the National Cathedral is only “nominally Episcopal.”

Pussy Riot became a cause célèbre for the Russian opposition and its Western supporters. Many Russian Orthodox believers saw things differently. 

John F. Kennedy's famous
Houston speech on church and state during
the 1960 presidential campaign elicited Rick Santorum's after-the-fact disgust. Though Santorum
misrepresents the speech in some ways--Kennedy didn't say anything about
limiting religious institutions and leaders from speaking on public issues--he
is right to find the speech theologically lame.

William Cavanaugh has written a pair of stunningly important books, in which he makes a clear and persuasive argument for overturning a founding myth of the modern Western state.

The U.S. Supreme Court's opinions about the relationship between religion and the state have been increasingly separationist, argues Phillip Hammond, a distinguished sociologist of religion and contributor to the so-called civil religion discussion. Although the nation "began as a de facto Protestant society," it has since the close of the Civil War moved toward greater and greater government neutrality not only toward differing religions but also toward the difference between religion and irreligion. This is as it should be, Hammond thinks. Behind the Constitution, he contends, is a "constitutional faith," and separationism, rightly understood, is its legal or judicial expression.